Customer Management System for a Meal-Delivery Business
For the two-course IT Systems Project capstone in my M.S. in Applied Information Technology, our team analyzed the operations of a local meal-delivery company and built a customer management system around how it actually worked.
What the business needed
- Recurring meal-plan orders with start and end dates, quantities, and discounts.
- Customer allergies and food aversions tracked and checked against orders, since a miss is a safety issue.
- Vacation holds and multiple delivery locations, so each day's cooking and delivery list is right.
What we delivered
- Business process models (BPMN swim lanes) of how the business ran, from creating menus to daily production and delivery.
- A database application to manage customers, orders, meal plans and pricing, discounts, delivery locations, and vacation holds.
- Allergies flagged separately from preferences, and carried through to the affected meal plans.
- Operational reports: daily orders, deliveries by meal plan and location, allergies and aversions, vacations, customer list, and billing.
- A step-by-step user's guide written for non-technical staff, including identity checks before account details are discussed.
Why it still matters
- It's the same work I do today at enterprise scale: understand the business process first, model it, then build the system and the controls around it.
- Data quality, safety-critical rules, and documentation people actually use were part of the design from day one.